From the archive
12 Aug 2026
The surest way to get nothing from a powerful person, Keith Brady has learned, is to put them on the spot. Better to arrive with something they can accept without a moment's hesitation. Brady is project lead at Repair Cafe Gosport, and in the group's early days the problem was the usual one: too few fixers, too little reach, and a town that mostly didn't know they existed.
The first stage was trust, and trust, it turns out, is built from paperwork. Before any invitation went out, the group made its legal structure and finances transparent, ready to explain ring-fenced banking with multiple signatories. They bought their own domain so that emails came from the organisation rather than a volunteer's personal account. And they started a rung lower, courting local councillors first, on the grounds that an MP is likelier to visit if a councillor from their own party has already spoken well of you.
Their first anniversary party doubled as the occasion. The Mayor came, the MP came, and the local paper covered it. Gosport's MP sets aside one Saturday a month to see three or four local groups; the cafe's aim is to hold one of those slots each year, which means planning well ahead and getting to know the person who runs her diary.
When she does visit, the visit has to work for her. Someone is briefed with a thirty-second pitch and the key facts. Volunteers and visitors talk to her in their own words, so the praise doesn't sound scripted. Photos are staged well enough to be worth publishing, and afterwards the group follows up with its measured environmental and social impact. She is also encouraged to bring a broken item of her own - ideally, Brady notes drily, one the team will find fairly easy to fix.
Only after all that came the ask, pre-agreed rather than sprung. The relationship now returns things the cafe never planned for: a student journalist's interview with the MP in the local paper, nominations to the volunteer recognition event she hosts in Parliament, and her signature on the UK Repair and Reuse Declaration. Brady is careful to say every constituency is different. What transfers is the sequence: govern well, be seen, then ask.
Before writing to your MP, fix the boring things: a bank account with multiple signatories, a cheap domain of your own and an email address that isn't a volunteer's personal one. Invite local councillors to your next anniversary or repair day and let the MP hear about you from them. Budget a full year of visits before you ask for anything - and make the first ask one that costs them nothing.
The Restart Project · Read the source